so the new paradigm is that the president and congress andthe courts work for you... you don't work for them.....

so, when IQ45 said, MAGA, make America great... he was wrong...completely and utterly wrong (as he is wrong about everything else)

no, that is not the job function of the American government..to Make America great...no, the job of government is to improve your life and by doing so, you, the american citizen will make America great.......... the government doesn't make america great,the citizens of America is what makes America great......

and by providing support and help and encouragment to the true boss of America, which is its citizens, American goverenment canimprove its citizens life's and THAT is what makes America great...the citizens of America is the reason America is great, not the president,not the congress or the courts or any institution that exists in America,but the people, that is who makes America great.....

We return to this idea of government of the people, for the people,by the people..... and that is the only way, the only way you can creategreatness in America.......to make America great again is to allows the citizens the chance to make America great again...

it is not the government we trust or in god we trust or in our institutions, but in the average citizen of America that we give our trust to.......... they are the ones who will make America great again.........

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

Dan~ wrote:Do you think that civilians are less crooked than governers?

K: it is not in one person that we depend upon but all of us....a group of people are far more likely to be honest then just oneor two people...…...think about any situation involving a groupand morality..... it is far more likely that a group will engagein moral acts then just one person...… now, I will grant you thatquite often, groups will commit immoral, unjust actions likethe lynching of blacks in the south during the Jim crow years..the individual will feel embolden, safe when acting in a mobas one person in a group committing unjust, immoral actsthey wouldn't have done alone..... but with that said, quiteoften, one moral person in a group will often provide moral guidencefor a group to be just and be moral within a group situation.....the question in a group situation is one of accountablity.... holding a groupaccountable just as we hold an individual accountable is key to keeping a group of people acting just and moral......

(at this point, we don't give an account of what is just and moral becausethat could be a 300 page book..... we state that knowing what it means to be just and moral are known, they are just ignored by people)

I do believe that people can be moral and just when they are being heldaccountable for their actions and given this, I do believe that individualscan be more moral then our "governers" especally when people are being heldaccountable, being held responsibile for their actions.......

and in this lies the failure of our "modern" society because we are only accountable, not just for being kind or nice or having love in our hearts, but being accountable by monetary standards... having money/profits asguiding our actions and not the safety and stability of the systems webelong to.......

in the end, we are all acountable for each other.... that news just hasn't reached the ears of everyone yet..... but I hope it does reach people soon...

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

barbarianhorde wrote:I saw more of this thread and only understand now it is a private one.Sosorry.

K: it is not a private thread..... but I expect the same level of self introspection that I offer of myself...………. anyone may come or go as they please but hereyou must be able to challenge yourself on what your values are or your idea's....

for example, you stated that "its really all baloney our system"

and I then ask, ok you have an analysis of our "system"what are you going to do with that analysis?

your didn't really have a response..... and because I expect people toengage, they usually just run away as you are apparently running away...

and that is fine......I don't expect people to hold themselves to the samehigh standards I hold myself when engaging in philosophy...…..

what I am doing here, as philosophy is a good as anything written inthe last 500 years...….and as with any good philosophy, it is hard...to both understand and to engage with...to do philosophy as I have done it requires commitment and a willingness to engage honestlywith the values and myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions that we all have.....few want to engage in a real search for the truth....frankly, it a lot of work and can be on the painful side...….I have changed my political thought 3 times in my lifetime andmy philosophical thought/stance more then that.....but it takescourage to engage with oneself and few have that courage....

so it seems that this is a private thread but really it is a private threadbecause people lack the courage for an "attack upon their convictions" and so they run away.....personally, stay or leave, it doesn't changes whatI see as my essential mission which is to explore what it means to be humanand explore what are our human possibilities in the modern age...…

and if I am the only seeker, that is fine too..... I recognize that my thoughts and my commitment to finding the answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions leave me being a man apart from society and so be it.....I thank you for your input…

I shall continue on my discovering what it means to be human in this modern age...….

Peter Kropotkin wrote:Today's Idea is about a misguided idea, happiness.

the Greeks were all over this idea that life was about happiness. They spent a whole lot of time going over how a man could be happy,with pleasure, with knowledge, with fame or success. The medieval philosophers thought it was the closer to god, the happier a person. We have the declaration of independence saying, Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But what if they are wrong! What if the purpose of life has nothing to do with happiness. This pursuit of happiness is another lie used to give us some hope that we will find happiness

I think maybe the secret they were in on was that the pursuit of a big goal makes you happy. So you might as well go for a big goal like Happiness, and it will make you happy to try.

I want to smile in retrospect. So I need to give myself reasons to smile, thats how I live my life so thats my philosophy.

think about it, think about happiness and sadness and all those other feelings we have.They (feelings) are transitory, very fleeting, they come and go like the wind, never staying too long. Someone says to you, I am sad because of ....... That event that caused the sadness is also transitory.I am sad because I lost my job. I am happy because I am in love. I am mad because the Giants lost lastnight. Transitory events which lead to transitory feelings. I am sad because I lost my job.... will I still be sad tomorrow? We don't know, we cannot hazard a guess as to whither we will be sad tomorrow or thenext day or the next day.

You got a better bet at influencing this and not being the sad one the next day too if you pursue happiness with a zeal.Go out and fish, catch a big one, know what I mean? I mean adventure. Happiness is a secret code word for adventure.

We might still be jobless, but our feelings, changes, transitory. I have found in my life, when I was happy, I was doing something else, my happiness was a resultof doing something. My happiness was the byproduct of something else. I was happy because I was in love.I was in love because I was happy, doesn't work that way. Happiness, sadness, anger, are all byproductsof something else. I was sad because .... I am angry because ...... I am happy because......

External causes can never make a warrior sad. Only a lack of his own will to go out and conquer or stand firm to protect is the sadness of the world which he shares in bad years, meagre years.William James is all thats needed for happiness control. But happiness is a verb and you can't be passively happy.

Our emotions didn't causethe event, the event caused our emotions. I have noticed I don't react the same way I used to react. I recall being very angry after 9/11 and wanting to nuke every Muslim country. The feeling passed quickly

Haha yeah thats what happens. For me it passes but I decide I need some action to counteract this shit.I feel the need to wash my hands off the evil so I seek opportunity to strike back. This calms my mind. Or heart first, it stabilizes my heart so my mind gets clear.

and I got over it. I remember feeling sick and angry over the various shootings that occurred, Virginia Tech,and all the others. I heard about South Carolina this morning, it made slightly sad, but I know that will pass soon.I know, know more senseless deaths and shootings will happen soon because we allow it. I have putthe recent south Carolina shooting into context and have accepted with a sad understanding. It is a wisdomthat allows me to take such sad events and put them into an historical and political context knowing I willbe reading about another such event, tomorrow and next week and next year. All because we are pursing our "happiness" and allowing guns.

No because education sucks I think. Of course except Ivy League. But the rest is shit and students take it out on the system.

Life is not sacred, it is a biological event and biological events. don't rely on emotions such as happiness or sadness or anger. biological events only exist to exist and recreate. Biology is not about sadness or other emotions, but about existing and then recreating itself. I don't need to feel sad or happy or angryto understand my purpose in life is not, IS NOT, happiness, but to recreate, to reproducefor another generation to exist. If we go extinct, follow the dinosaurs, we have failed in our biological purpose, which is to exist and to reproduce another generation. All our happinessand sadness and anger means nothing if we fail in our biological purpose.

For me biological events are often sacred. I don't know anything else so why is it not sacred? You dismiss yourself as unsacred. Which is true, you can do that. Stalin wrote book about that. He was pretty smart if some people don't know. He lured the nazis into the winter and then came out like a boogieman. He was Georgian, a rural romantic almost a gypsie, like Hitler actually. Anyway, acidness is not always given in the minds of humans. But in happy humans I think always sacredness is close by when we sleep.

Gotta trust the wolves.Dreams are all wolves.

Now recall yesterday lesson, how we exist and we shall always exist to the end of timebecause of atoms living on beyond our existence. How do we understand this with any failure of our biological purpose? This is an contradiction. How do we handle this contradiction?

Kropotkin

No, we die and are forgotten. But not immediately. We need to be respectful so we get a good grave people don't wanna piss on.(I dont want to bother you with my beliefs)

K: I recall reading this post and thinking then, as I do now, I did notsee your post as a challenge, friendly or otherwise.......I simply did notsee your post as any sort of attampt to get me to "reevaluate" my thinking....

I saw your post as simply responding with your own thoughts about what I wrote....for example, one might post, What about god? and the next poster might respondwith their own thoughts about god, but at no point that response includes a challenge to the first poster to engage in a dialogue about the "fitness" ofbeliefs by anybody.......In other words, I didn't respond to your post asyou wanted me to respond/engage to your post because we saw your post differently.....

you saw it as a challenge whereas I just saw it as a personal response to a post of mine....no challenged was offered and no challenged was accepted... at least in my view......whereas you might have indeed offered a challenged and I, in your eyes, refused........

these brings up points of communication that often plague communication......

as individuals, we bring our own intrepretations to every aspect of communication....as I am hearing impared, I intreprete communications different then hearing peopleand different then fully deaf people..... I exist between two worlds, the hearing and the deaf.....as I exists between many other "intrepretations" of the world......

I am not materialistic in the sense of finding my reason for existenceto be the buying and selling of anything.... I don't exist to make moneyor to gain the usual reasons for existence, fame... fortune.... power....

I have, for over 40 years, searched for the "TRUTH"...…. but the "TRUTH" I have found is that we, each of us, find our own individual truths....I have studied philosophy, science, religion, history, economics,art and literature in an attempt, perhaps a vain attempt, but an attemptnevertheless to discover the answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions....

What can I know? what are we to do? ……..

my engagement with the world is different then your engagement because we exists in different but parallel worlds.....by that I mean that we exists as human beings with a common history,with a common biology, within a common ideology.....but different because our own individual history is different....

and because of our mutual shared common history, we can understandeach other, but because of our different personal history, we quite oftenmisunderstand each other...…….the question of communication is a complicatedone and has been discussed at length for over 2000 years and will continue to be discussed for another 2000 years because of its nature....

you see a challenge and I simply see a response..... we can see the sameword and interpret it quite differently...……….. that is both the pleasure of and the problem of communication...……..

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

I see the "Modern" age as being different then the other ages,not necessarily better or worse, just different...…

the industrial age and the ensuing technological age has created a different understanding of the universe thenprior ages....... the ancient world and the medieval world haddifferent paradigms, different realities, different goals and agendas.....

we see very essential matters like time differently....

a complaint of the Greeks and Romans was that when two parties agreed to meet, that each party had a different senseof what time they were going to meet and quite often it led one party or another to wait a considerable time forthe other party to arrive...... they didn't have clocks as we have them and so, meeting at 10:00 am as we would meet wasreally not possible....the time they fixed was really just rough guess.... what does it mean to meet mid-morning? we have clocks and so for us, it is easy to arrange a very specific time to meet... for them, not quite so easy.....

this one example is just one point how we differ from theancient and middle ages...………….

we are human but our individual circumstances dictate how we see the universe and reality...…

existing in the "modern" age determines that we see reality and the universe differently then someone fromthe ancient world or the medieval world...…just that fact alone, of when we exist, determines how we interpret the world...…………

the tools of man also determine how we understand the world...…for example, if the only tools you have is a hammer, then you see the world as being one where a hammer pounding somethingdown is how you see the world.... whereas if you have a nail or a computer or a wheel makes how you see the world differently.....

if we can only transport ourselves via a horse or a wagon changeshow we see the world as oppose to if we transport ourselves viacars, trains, airplanes or spaceships...…. the very means oftransportation changes how we see the world.... the technological aspects of the world changes how we see the world...…..

if I live in a house changes my perception of the world as doesmy living in a cave or a yurt, changes my perception of the world.....we are still human beings but because of our different technologiesand means of living, we have different understandings of the universeand reality...……….. how we live changes how we understand...….

so as an American living in 2018 changes my understanding of the world thena person living in a tribe in China understands the world...………..

so when I speak of values, it is really speaking of values that exists in modern America in 2018...…..

but, but values that have value in modern America 2018,can have value in modern China because values do have the ability to leap over technology and science and politics....

for example, we can speak of love as a universal value becausebecause it can exists independently of the external operations of the world..... in other words, love is not about technology ortime or the political or social or economic goings on in the world.....love isn't about those things and can exist in or out of those things...…love is independent of external matters...….values are independentof external matters like time or space or the political or economicor social goings on in the world...………. we can have love inany form of government or any form of social or economic system....

that is the value of "values" they exists independently of the external world but they are influenced by the external world.... how we thinkof say, Justice, is impacted by the external events of our world, our reality....

WAIT A MINUTE.... WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE...… you said two completely different things in the space of three paragraphs....first values are independently of our reality and thenyou said values are impacted by the world..... you can't have it both ways,...……..ah, a contradiction......I am not afraid of contradictions because I believe the truth, any truth, isfound within a contradiction...……

Kropotkin, you aren't making any sense...….. but I am making senseif, if you aren't married to or have your understanding of the world written in stone...…………….. this is a Zen moment...……

the questions and answers of the "Modern" age is found in the contradictions ofthe "Modern" age...…… and we are full of contradictions in our current understanding of the universe, of our reality...………

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

what is certain? that has been the pursuit of both science and philosophy since the rise of science, roughly 1500...….

the Roman/Greek world had their version of certainty...bothoperated with the certainty of a fixed and set universe......

the medieval world has their certainty in their belief system in whichthe point of existence, human existence was to get to heaven....the medieval world negated the physical world..... the body was denied in favor of the soul...and the order of the universe was anhierarchy... from bottom to top with god being at the top and the popenext and the staff of the pope next with the kings and royality being nextwith the lessor nobality next with the large base of this pyramid being the large mass of peasants and serfs......

this was the certainty of the middle ages.... and then came the cracks in this belief system.... we call it the rise of science which has engagesince 1500, the search for certainty.....the same certainty that was feltduring the Greco-Roman period and the Medieval period.....

you can describe the "Modern" era, as a search for certainty......

for example, Marx and Hegel both wrote about how their "systems" wereboth models of certainty......and you can see in Kant how he thought hisCritiques, all three of them, were models of certainty in his pursuit tofind certainty in philosophy, especially in his "Critique of Pure Reason"

but we now live in 2018 and certainty is hard to find....... science doesnot guarantee the existence of a "certain" universe........philosophyhas its own issues and our political, social, economic and historical understanding of the world has left us without any grounds for certainty....

I have gone over this ground before but I don't think or see how an understanding of moving objects that is the bases of Modern science can help us or aid us in the gaining an understanding of the world, how the understanding of moving objects can createcertainty in the world...………….the entire theory of relativity is about a mathematical understanding of the movement betweenobjects in space with one being stationary and the other movingwhereas the special theory of relativity is about two moving objects and how we can account for their relationship as they move.....

I just don't see how we can build a coherent system of or a modelof what it means to be human based on a mathematical understandingof moving objects...…………...that is one of the major problems withtrying to stretch science into philosophy.... science does it thing which has little to do with any kind of understanding of the philosophical nature of the world...….

so what is the philosophical nature of the world? Let us remove what isn't the philosophical nature of the world...……. the movement of the planets, stars, galaxies and of atoms..... none of this creates any type of understandingof the human condition, the human problem...…

even if science were to discover what in fact began the universe, it doesn't change the reality of us being and existing in the here and now.....

the existential crisis of being human does not come from our beginning,to the big bang, but to the reason for and what is the point of our existence...I submit that when science does find out the reason for the big bang, it willnot solve a dam thing..... the question of human existence does not resolve around how we got here but why, why we are here?

we are attempting to find certainty in this question of why we are here, insteadof how we came to be..... (a side note, it would be quite interesting to find out how we came to be, but it doesn't really change the existential questions of human existence)…

how does one find the answers to the existential questions of our human existence?

we use our tools of logic and science and philosophy and religion and history..but the are just tools, a process to discover answers to certain questions...…

this question of certainty looms large over every thing we do and act upon.....

how are we to be sure that our hard earn taxpayer money is being spentwisely and on things that matter in our lives? that is a question of certainty.....

How can I be certain that my taxes won't go up this year? How can I be certainthat we have a strong enough defense, a military, to protect us?

How can I be certain that I have all the freedom I am suppose to have?

How can I be certain that the laws being passed, benefit me?

How can I be certain that the company I work for won't go bankrupt? It won't go belly up next year?

the many questions we have of the universe and its nature, revolvearound questions of certainty.... ……

the next stage of philosophy is an understanding of what it means to exist without certainty......the next great philosophy is a understandingof how to exist without certainty...…….. how does one "ride" the wave of uncertainty into the future? the quest for certainty is a search done by our ancestors...… we "Moderns" have no need of certainty anymore....because that certainty locks us into actions, behavior, schools of thought,that are temporary..... we act, think, behave, believe in a temporary fashion...…… our beliefs as children are temporary... the belief in Santa Clausis an temporary one.....our childish behavior is a temporary one, our belief system is a temporary one at every age...…….

at no point do we engage in or with permanent thoughts, beliefs, behavior,or actions..... so why should we believe in permanence, in certainty, when clearly at every stage of our lives, we act, believe, think, behave in atemporary manner.... my beliefs, actions, thoughts, behavior are differenttoday, then they were 20 or 30 or 40 years and they will continue to changeand evolve as I age... become an senior citizen, just 3 years from now...…

so why should we engage in finding certainty when our very lives change, modify,develop, revise and turn over as we age...….. I am not the same person, the sameman I was and I shouldn't be......as I age, I change...…..

and this pursuit of finding certainty doesn't reflect this constant change that we human beings exist in...….

so in the final analysis, finding certainty in a life full of change, temporary actions, beliefs and thoughts is a foolish task.

we should reject any attempt to spend our lives seeking that whichwe don't live our lives in, we don't exist in or with certainty....so why search for it?

embrace the who we are, embrace or become who we are.....we are creatures that change, evolve, seek, and engage with movement..... let us embrace that movement as our existential core of being human...….. the human being you are at this moment,that will change in time, in the next 5 minutes you will change in some fashion... embrace that change.... become who you are... the human creature is one that is constantly changing and evolving....become that creature...…..

become who you are

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

We have in the last post looked at certainty.we shall continue this look at certainty by other means.This however requires us to engage in theology and we all know how much I dislike theology, but it must done.

This question has been at the forefront of modern philosophy since Descartes.and the outright search for certainty lasted until Kant, slightly less then 200 years.But the search for certainty didn't stop, just changed directions.

We all know the story of Adam and Eve and original sin. This is where we begin.The story looks like this, god created Adam and Eve and place them into paradise which was named, The Garden of Eden. god had but one demand,that the two of them, did not eat the apple of knowledge. They disobeyedand that was the real original sin, the act of disobedence to god, insubordination.And for this "crime", Adam and Eve suffered punishment. Both were tossed of paradise, Eden and Eve was made to additionally suffer by the pain of childbirth.

By this act, this crime of disobedience, this original sin is the reason thatevil was released into the world. For the punishment of original sin wasthe creation of evil. To be absolved of our crime, we must confess our sins,our original crime and thus be able to return to paradise.

What we lost in the commission of the crime of insubordination was the certaintyEden. With the crime of original sin, we were tossed into an uncertain world. With our "crime", we lost certainty. So how do we find or rediscover certainty? The bible tells us we must confess and thus might, might be able to getforgiveness from god. Thus the finding certainty or heaven, involves a confession. OH Lord, I have sinned. And the only hope of forgiveness liesoutside of us. This is important. The only hope of salvation lies outside of us.Salvation is found when we are forgiven for our transgressions, our original act of insubordination. This act of forgiveness cannot, cannot originate inside of us. We cannot find certainty by any act of our own. According toreligions, we cannot find salvation, certainty by any means within us, withinour own works, words or prayer. Salvation can only come from outside of us.

The question thus becomes, can we find, discover if certainty, forgiveness,salvation can exists within us? Can we with our works, our words, our beliefs findcertainty, salvation, forgiveness within us?

We know that the outside of us, the world, reality is uncertain, random, chaotic.Science has told us so. There is no certainty that lies within the scientific theories ofour day. There are simply theories that get modified when some new discovery is made. What truth can be found in the theory of Gravity? What truth can be found in the theoryof evolution? For theories evolve and adapt and change with every new bit of information or data that scientist find. How can we find certainty with scientific theories whenthey are so easily modified by new data?

The outside world cannot provide us with any sort of certainty becauseof the problematic nature of reality, of the universe we see.

Certainty must be found within us, but how do we find certainty within us?

By the use of values. We can create certainty with values that begin within us and are the means by which we can use to judge and understand ouractions and meanings. We can find certainty with our use of the valueof Justice. Justice as a value can give us a meaning of life. We can baseour life upon a search for and a finding of Justice...………

The act of Justice can create meaning, value, certainty in our lives. Justice which is equality, if practiced correctly, gives us a certainty that we cannot find in any other way. Justice/Equality which as beenthe same since the beginning of time and will continue to exist till the end of time, is a certainty we can use in our lives. We can hold valueswhich create certainty in our lives of which Justice/equality is one.

We can hold values that mark what it means to be human and the useof those values create certainty. For to be human means one who holds values.That is the working definition of a human being, one who holds values.

The values we hold can be positive ones or they can be negative one. The problem with holding negative values is that they aren't sustainable.The negative values cannot be used to sustain a system like a political system or a family system or an economic system. Values like hate, greed,lust, anger, by their very nature, disrupt and creates entropy within any human based system. The loss of entropy in a human system can be fromthe use of negative values which drains a system of energy. Negative valuesdrain energy from a system, positive values increase energy into a system. And that energy either coming or going, increases or decreases energy whichgoing out is entropy and coming in, makes a system stronger.

It cannot be denied that positive energy comes from positive values. A family with positive values is a energy plus system and a family with negative values is a negative loss system. Positive values like truth, justice, peace, love, honesty creates energy, positive energy in people,groups and entire systems. Positive values are sustainable energy in a system. Which system would you contribute your energy too? a negative value system or a positive value system?

Unless you are lying to yourself, you want and people want a positive value/energy system and that type of system is sustainable. If we can, we will pick, choose an positive energy/valuesystem every time.

We can find salvation, forgiveness, peace in a positive energy/value system.We cannot find salvation or peace in a negative energy/value system.Your choice of values that are positive energy/values can create positive energy/values in a system which is the opposite of entropy.

Entropy is the result of energy leaving a system and negative valueshelps drive energy from a system. Negative values are values which encourages entropy, the loss of energy.

and we are lead back to our original question, which is how do we find certainty?

we find certainty by values and the energy those values create. the values we choose creates certainty in our lives as long as the values we choose are positive values and not negative values. You can find certainty, forgiveness,salvation in choosing positive values which lead to positive energy. Values whichform the basis of our understanding of our actions in the world. Values create meaningwithin any action we take. We must choose our values then and only thencan we act with an understanding of what that action means. That understandingcomes from the certainty of knowledge that we have positive values/energy.

Our actions is understood best by the values we have. we must base our actionsupon our values... values come first, then actions. Justice as a value can givemeaning and purpose to our lives and create meaning and purpose in our actions.

If we apply values to our actions, we create meaning and purpose in our lives.And that meaning and purpose is certainty of our values and actions. To be just is to create energy/value/meaning/purpose and certainty in our lives.

If we apply justice and love and peace and honesty to our lives, we createbetter lives with more meaning and energy and value and purpose. we create certainty...………

So the path to certainty is the path of positive values which createspositive energy and meaning in our lives. If we adapt positive values,will there be no failure? of course not, but failure itself can be a positive thing if we realize that "to fail is to be human".

that there is no failure, just a new understanding of the universe.

If we are to achieve forgiveness, salvation, certainty, it beginswith values that we choose for ourselves. Positive values.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

I was in a bookstore and I saw a book about feminism and the modern world.One of the points of the introduction was about identity. I have read a lot of history and I don't recall in any society or culturethat identity was ever a problem. Why is identity a problem in the modern world? What about the modern world makes identitya problem?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

so, when last seen I asked about identity.Why are we, in this modern or postmodern world depending onwho you speak to, so concerned about and with identity?

If you read the Greeks or Romans or Medieval writers, you don't see any such wonder about identity or gender or even a sense of "where are we going? thatwe see in the writings of the last 200 years. The certainty that existed for those Greek/Roman/Medieval writers does not exist for us.

The question of "Who am I" never occurred to those writers of the ancient world.It is a "modern" question but why? Why do we ask those question? what is it about the Modern world that forces us to ask ourselves,"Who am I"? What has changed?

Clearly, science and technology are a major reason for the change fromthe ancient and medieval world to the "Modern" world, but what is the change that has happened in our modern world that has occurred fromthe beginning of the modern age, say 1500 to today, 2018?

Some sources I have read believe that the change is from the "Enlightenment" to the current thought.... which is to say, the "Enlightenment" thought, beliefs,idea's and methodology carried the day for roughly 150 years, depending onwhen one believes when the "Enlightenment" began, some like Jonathan Israel,believe that the "Enlightenment" was over by 1750 and some believe that it wasover at the French Revolution, 1790. In either case, the end of the "Enlightenment" seems to have occurred at the beginning of the First World War, 1914.

Romanticism which was the next phase of thought, can be said to begin with Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and has never really ended.

Has it been this clash between the ideals of "Enlightenment" and "Romanticism" that has created the modern world? Hitler, for example was an Romantic. Hitler was an romantic by trying to recreate an Aryan person, an aryan society, that hadn't existed for over a thousand years.

Ronald Reagan was also an Romantic..... How is this? Raygun believed intrying to recreate a past that didn't exist in the first place. He was alwaystrying to bring back the 1950's but a 1950's that didn't exist in the first place.

so this question of identity is about who we are in this modern age of 2018. Read the Greeks or Romans and you don't have this modern question of sexual identity. Many Greeks and Romans did have homosexualrelationships but it wasn't the identity crisis that it is today. They simpledid what felt good and was pleasurable to them. So, once again, why in themodern era, do we have this issue? One possibility was that the Greeks, and Romans,lived in far more certain times. If the state was floundering and problems existedas they do, then it was felt that the gods were mad at the state/people and broughtthese problem to the state/people as punishment. But it wasn't because of the very nature of the universe was random or chaotic as we believe the universe is today.

What is different about today then it was 2000 years or a 1000 years or500 or 250 or 25 years ago? What makes our times, "Modern" times?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

so, a Romantic is one who wants a return to a past, eithera past that didn't exist or one that has been romanticize.

Now this last election had as the theme of IQ45 being,

MAGA. Make America great..... Again.

This is a romanticize idea of an America that was, not as it is today.

The key word is Again. Once America was great and by following the village idiot, we can be great again. How did that work out for you?

Greatness can never be achieved by following a past result or history orpast events.... Greatness is a function of adapting to the current conditionsand then seeing a possibility/possibilities that can be achieved in the current conditions.

In other words, we must follow a vision of where we want to be, not a vision of where we were. That is greatness. Going from here to somefuture possibility, not going from here to a romanticize or never existed.IQ45 is a Romantic and anyone who follows him is following a Romanticvision of the past where America was great. We must go from here to somefuture possibilities... we must have a vision of a future and then work towardthat future. That is the only possibility of greatness available to us.

A vision of achieving the past has never lead to greatness. Can you nameone who had a vision of the past who lead any society or culture to greatness? I can't think of anyone and you can't either.

The quest of either a person or a society is to go from here to there,and there is always the future. So how do we achieve our possibilitiesof the future? By creating a vision of the future we want.

But to get from here to there, we must properly understand exactly where we are and that means understanding the "modern" world and what it means to exists in "modern" world.

Why are we different from the past? What has created this difference? And what is the means for us to take that knowledge and go into the future.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

We have this question of identity and the Modern age that existsbecause we are uncertain or unable to get a fixed onwhat vision we are to follow. Are we to pursue a prior visionof what made us "great" or should we attempt to pursue a visionof the future and its possibilities?

Ours is truly an age of ideology, Capitalist, communist, liberal, conservative, totalitararism or democracy? All of these are notstatements of fact, they are possibilities for who we might be. We are in the midst of severe issues and the solutions offered upare ideological solutions, not solutions based on the problems.

Let us look at and understand the nature of our problems.First we have structural problems, non ideological problems,climate change, extreme poverty, massive pollution, the comingscarcity of resources.... these are not left/right issues but issuesthat challenge us as human beings. Another way to understand this might be this, these issues are issues because we have to come to understand that the rights of human beings are a legitimate concern.....

Thus we can state that human beings have the right to..... food, water, clean air, education, medical resources and care,

Will continue later, wife is home.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

[quote="Peter Kropotkin"]We have this question of identity and the Modern age that existsbecause we are uncertain or unable to get a fixed onwhat vision we are to follow. Are we to pursue a prior visionof what made us "great" or should we attempt to pursue a visionof the future and its possibilities?

Ours is truly an age of ideology, Capitalist, communist, liberal, conservative, totalitararism or democracy? All of these are notstatements of fact, they are possibilities for who we might be. We are in the midst of severe issues and the solutions offered upare ideological solutions, not solutions based on the problems.

Let us look at and understand the nature of our problems.First we have structural problems, non ideological problems,climate change, extreme poverty, massive pollution, the comingscarcity of resources.... these are not left/right issues but issuesthat challenge us as human beings. Another way to understand this might be this, these issues are issues because we have to come to understand that the rights of human beings are a legitimate concern.....

Thus we can state that human beings have the right to..... food, water, clean air, education, medical resources and care and the right to determine theirfate, both economically and politically.

these are the rights we can state that are basic and inherent in every human being. That there are other rights can be accepted but note, that the concept of rights for human beings change and adapt. This idea of rights has changed and evolved as our economic, political and social systems have changed and evolved. The rights of human beings during the timesof the Pharaohs were different then the rights of the average Greek and different then the average Roman. The evolution of the humanbeing since ancient times can be rewritten as the evolution of rights inhuman beings. The Egyptian had no rights, the Greek had a few rights if, if theywere a citizen, the average Roman had more rights under the Republic and gradually over the years lost their rights until by 300 AD, the average Romanhad virtually no rights. This state of affairs last until the rediscovery of rights when the Renaissance rediscovered ancient writers like Cicero and Horace.

The Roman writers brought home a new/old idea of rights that was unknown during the Medieval times. The Renaissance writers were not about exploring these idea's, they were simply about discovering these idea's.The exploration of these idea's was the beginning of the modern world. The modern world began by reacting to the ancient idea's of scienceand religion and philosophy. For example, Descartes was simply following an idea thatwas suggested by St. Augustine over a 1000 years earlier. But if you think aboutDescartes and his suggestion, you see the new thing about his "radical" thoughtexperiment. He thought of himself as a single entity. I, Descartes, to discoverthe thing I can be absolutely certain about, will try this personal experiment, using my thought and my body as part of the experiment. Descartes thought of himself as an individual participating in an individual experiment. This is the radical nature of his experiment. He was simply an individual, one person,not as the medieval man thought about it. For the medieval man, he was simply another person hoping for a ticket to heaven and god. The artist of the medieval times didn't sign their works. We don'tknow who built the massive cathedrals of the western world. Who actuallybuilt the Chartres Cathedral in Chartres France? We don't know and theydidn't care about taking personal credit in medieval times. It was a collectiveeffort. We don't hear about the individual in medieval times.

We begin to hear about individuals during the Renaissance. Not justabout Kings or Popes or nobles, but about the average citizen in a waythat didn't happen during the Middle ages.

The question of "who I am" changed from the medieval times to the Renaissance and then changed again during the period of the Enlightenmentand changed again during the Romantic period. This change has continued intothe Modern age. But it has become complicated, this idea of "individual",but the question still remains, why? Why do we have the question of identity when no other culture or society or civilization had this problem before?

And the answer lies once more, with the industrial revolution. It has changed the nature of who we are and what are our possibilities.We must confront the industrial revolution in a way that we have neverdone before and we must confront the nature of production and consumerismthat exists today. The answer to "who we are" lies, in part, in our economic,political and social systems that we have today.

what to make of the current social, economic and political systemsthat created both the modern man and the modern age.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

But as anyone "knows", everything we see or say or hear or touch as been done before, what can be new after a million years of human history? Recall your art history...…. You have art from the middleages which was religious art up till 1880's which was your basic portrait art,the art that sits in museums like the Mona Lisa or you have landscape paintings....pretty pictures of cities or the mountains...….

but Art beginning in about 1880 started to become something different...…you begin to have your various ism's in art like Dadaism and surrealism and art Nouveau and symbolism and fauvism and Die Brucke…. there are many different types of Art ism's that existed after 1880.....

You have to begin to historically understand, that by 1880 a newmedical approach was beginning in Europe which we now call psychoanalysis...…. This new method was beginning to make itsway into the conscious of people everywhere and it made it home in the place where it made the most sense, Artists...…

for Artist, the unconscious was where art is created and formed.....Art exists in the realm of the unconscious and Artists usetheir unconscious to create that art. "To make it new"was about taking the unconscious and making it manifest...….Every great artist uses the unconscious but to "make it new" the Artist began to show us the unconscious in many different platforms.Music, painting, sculpture, architecture, literature...……..look at the art created after 1880 and you can see how the Artist would try to show us the unconscious at work in their art.For one example, stream of conscious writing in literature....the act of putting down words without "editing" as in James Joyce "Ulysses" for example. This form of writing would have been impossible before 1900...…….People did not have the "ears" to hear such "babbling"..... but because of the new "age" that we are in, the Modern age,we now have ears to hear such "Babbling".... but can you also see the resultsof the use of the unconscious in history? We have several events like the "Two World Wars" and the Holocaust and the cold war.....There does seem to be a connection between this new process ofseeking the unconscious and the horror of the 20th century.

Perhaps this is the reason that the "Frankenstein" mythos is so compelling in the 20th century. We have released the monster and it is our unconscious. So the question of the release ofthe terror and horror of the "Modern" age is the result of the understanding that we "must make it new" and we pursued this attempt to "make it new" into our unconscious and we madethe unconscious visible in our paintings and literature and poemsand architecture among the platforms made conscious.

This age has done something no other age has done, which is makethe unconscious visible. But once again we must ask ourselves, why this age? Why now? What has changed that made it possible, even necessary for us to explore the unconscious mind?

what event or event's has forced us to engage in an understandingof not only our physical bodies, but our unconscious mind?

The history of the 20th century is a direct result of this emphasis onmaking the unconscious visible from the two world wars to the holocaustto the nihilism and despair of the world of 2018.

For what must we do to free ourselves of our unleashing ourunconscious unto the world?

Doubt me? then ask yourself this, why do we have such an emphasis to heal our minds? We have thousands who job is to heal our mental state,to heal our minds, our unconscious minds. Why is psychology such a big businessnowadays? Why are we so mentally fucked up? This is beyond the normal stateof people who are mentally ill which has existed since the beginning of time tothe point where have a crisis in mental illness that exists in our "Modern" timesand to what can you attribute this crisis to? What has changed that has increasedmental illness to become perhaps the leading medical issue of our times?

We see mental illness existing even in the White House where clearly wehave a mentally unbalanced president. Why this increase in mental illness? Answer this question and you have the answer to one of the questionof the "modern" age. What the hell is wrong with us?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

You can see this in both the serial killer phenomena andthe various mass murders that occurred in America.

In fact I would say that America is the place where the soul is the most in need of healing and the vast numberof soul healers exists here, known as psychologist or therapist.

But why here and why now? The answer seems evident. This is the placewhere the nihilism of capitalism is the most evident and where it is most evidentthat workers are devalued, negated the most. What does it cost the human soulwhen it is evident that we are valued less then profits/money? Human beings must feel as if they have value and in the modern society where profits/money are given the highest priority, we see this damagingthe human soul. Personal worth is not just a number in a bank account,but personal worth lies in the value we offer to the world and to ourselves.If we have no value to offer the world, then our soul suffers.... It mightbe thought of as a basic human condition that we must feel like we are part of and value to and contributing to ourselves, our family, our group and our society. Then and only then can we feel ourselves to be of value. The nihilism of the modern age has denied us our opportunity to feel weare of some value to the world besides some abstract notion of contributingto the GDP. That doesn't give us any real or first hand knowledge of howwe are contributing and how we are of value to society. This notionof feeling that we have something to contribute is of prime value to humans and if we don't feel we are making some sort of contribution we become "soul" sick. It is ingrained in human beings to feel valuedand wanted and we need to feel like we have contributed in some fashion.

The modern world has denied us this as it practices nihilism on an ever largerscale. Nihilism: the denial and negation of human beings and their values.

It is society with its emphasis on profits/money that has created the soul sickness of its citizens. We are victims of a society that has no time or concernfor the human being and their values. Our society doesn't value the citizens who exist within our society and that, that creates the soul sickness that has so become epidemic within society and why we have so many healersof the soul, psychologists. Here we begin to see how the drug epidemic of our modern times has began. With the members of society trying to escapethe fact that society doesn't value them or their values...…. Drugs, alcohol, opioids, reckless behavior, addictions, mass murder and serial killers, are all symptoms of citizens in a society that doesn't value them. Want to end these problems of drug use and addictions and mass murders, then you must stop the nihilism thatdenies and negates the human being and their values.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

We are and have been searching for some certainty in the world for centuries, since the days of Descartes. This need of and for certainty is quite clear to anyone who looks at how people live their lives.

Part of our human certainty lies in the ground level of the society/civilization in which we live in...…...For example, we can not really feelcertain in a society where the our basic human needs of a secure society and where we are loved and where we can depend on our fundamental needsare to be meet. If on a daily basis, we are unsure if we are going to have our fundamental needs like food, water, shelter, clothing, thenthat uncertainty affects us both mentally and physically. Part of the certainty of a human being lies not only mentally, but physically, emotionally.

The uncertainty of the modern age not only exists from the physical needsthat must be met, but the mental and emotional needs being met, and that extends into our ideologies and ism's. Conservatism is a human need being met. The need to have security is one of the primereasons of people being conservatives. Conservatism as an ism is a means to create certainty in the world. The attempt to gain certainty is not just mental,but is physical and emotional. We as human beings must have certainty as a basic condition to lead our lives. And what happens if we don't have certainty in our lives? We become "soul" sick and turn to other means to gain certainty in our lives, be it drugs or complete belief in an ism or ideology.

In other words, those who are "born again Christians" become born again because they lacked belief in the certainty of the world. To become born againis to create certainty in ones life. To become born again is an attempt to heal the soul by an ism/ideology. But the ism/ideology doesn't address the real reasonone became soul sick in the first place hence needing to be born again.

No, the reason why someone becomes a born again Christian is to createcertainty in ones life and the reason why they didn't have certainty is becauseof society's nihilism which has denied and negated us as humans and denied and negated our values that we have as human beings. This is the root causeof born again Christians. There either in values or personally, have been denied and negated and they are attempting to find the much needed certainty we mustall have in being born again.

This example of trying to create certainty by an ism/ideology is commonplacein society today. The culture wars of the last 40 years can be simply an attemptto create certainty by one side or another. The vast right/left battle of the lastmany years is also an attempt to create certainty in the world by means of using ism's/ideologies as a means to create certainty. In fact, one could rewrite the history of the last century as the search for certainty.

Part of this search for certainty is also including in the search for meaning. If we find certainty, we might find meaning in our lives which is anotherform of finding certainty in our lives.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

Now there are a listing of issues that reside in our world, we have among them, what might be called "social" issues.

That are problems within the social order like poverty, social change, pollution, income inequality, bigotry like racism and sexism to name a few....

these issues are the result of social actions and beliefs and doings thatthe human being has done individually or collectively.

These named problems are the result of our actions and thus we have createdthe problems and we can solve the problem with our actions and beliefs anddoings, both individually and collectively.

The question arises in how important do we consider these problems inthe midst of our affairs. In other words, how do we rate poverty in the midstof our other issues, which are also socially created by human beings.

The so called "welfare state" is one possible solution to the problems createdby our actions or inaction, as the case may be. The "welfare state" is a perfectly reasonable response to the problems that have been created by human actions or inactions.

In other words, if we create the problem, then we must find the solution.If our ism's and ideologies have created the problems/issues, then we canfind a solution within other ism's and ideologies that are meant to solvethe problems created by the guilty ism/isms and ideologies.

If Capitalism has made poverty a permanent issue in society today, thenwe must find a solution to that problem. But why, one may ask? And therein lies one of the many issues that exists within society today.

We have failed to take responsibility for our actions even if the actions weretaken by our grandfathers and fathers...…..

If our collective actions taken hundreds of years ago has created a permanentclass of underemployed or unemployed people, we must be held responsible for that collective actions. But why? Why am I to be held responsible for actions takenhundreds of years ago? Ask yourself, then why we are being held to be guiltyof the actions of Adam/Eve, in the matter of the original sin, disobedience?

If the sins of the father can be passed on to the children, then we are responsible for the actions of our father and grandfather. If we are not responsible for the sins/actions of our father/grandfather, then we are not accountable forthe actions/sins of Adam/Eve.

You can't have it both ways. Either we are guilty in both counts or we areinnocent in both counts, you can't have us guilty in one instance andinnocent in another instance.

But I can't have it both ways either, I don't believe in original sin, of disobedience to god and yet, I believe we are accountable for the actionsof our father and grandfather in their actions or inactions that has createdthe issues and problems of today.

How do I solve this dilemma?

By noting the context. We have social issues like poverty whichdamage people, socially, economically, politically, emotionally,and psychologically. It doesn't matter if you believe or not, you are still being damaged as a human being by ism's and ideologiesthat have led to these social issues, whereas you can overcome the indoctrinations of your childhood which include religious indoctrinations like Catholicism and belief in god. By knowing thyself and overcoming those indoctrinations which then lead us to becoming who we are. We can individually overcomeour indoctrinations whereas we cannot individually overcome collective permanent poverty cycles. We must work together to overcome permanent povertywhereas we can individually overcome our childhood indoctrinations. Overcoming permanent poverty requires everyone in society to engage with,and therein lies the difference. The belief in god and the idea of original sin is an childhood indoctrination which affects us only if we allow it to, whereas poverty damages regardless if we believe in capitalism or not.

The question of knowing thyself and then overcoming those childhood indoctrinations and with that, becoming who you are. That path of knowledge is essential in our individual engagement with the universe,with reality. But we don't need that engagement to overcome permanent poverty. We need another level of engagement to overcome permanent poverty.... We must overcome permanent poverty by collective actions of society, of everyone. So our engagement really has two levels,first our engagement with ourselves to overcome our childhood indoctrinationsand the second level of engagement is with society and its issues and problems.

The first engagement is a private "battle" and the second engagement is about our collective actions we must achieve together. That is the difference betweenour being guilty by the actions of Adam/Eve and our being guilty of the actionsor inactions of our father and grandfather. We can solve one collectively and we can solve one individually. It is important to understand that engagement is both collective and individually.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

As we tend to find our meaning and salvation and certainty in things outside of us, I might suggest we find things inside of us.

for example, we might find certainty not in matters outside of us, butwe could find certainty in that which is in us, and that is values.

We can find certainty in values such as justice and love and harmonyand the list of values we can base our certainty on is a rather long list.

Let us take Justice for example, we can use the value of Justice asthe centerpiece of our certainty in the universe. Let the winds of changehowl over us and try to loosen our bearings but if we hold tight to values like Justice, we can survive and prosper if we hold tight to the value of Justice. Even in our search for Justice can provide us witha center and a Moring that allows us to withstand the trial and tribulationsof life. We don't need to be center on matters outside of when we canbe centered in matters within us. We have lost this ability to becomecentered with internal beliefs and values. We are so certain that we can become centered with material goods or money or a title or fame butthese things are empty promises. They cannot deliver what we crave, whichis certainty. A title or money or fame are whispers in the night that fadewith the sunlight. They don't amount to anything of value or of substance.They promise of money or a title or fame is fleeting and short lived. It is like eating Chinese food, it is filing for a short time, but withinthe hour, you're hungry again. The temporary promises of modern societyis short lived and leaves one feeling empty.

It is only in values can we find something that will sustain us into the night. With values we have something that is durable and foreverbecause values like justice and love and honor are not something that fades away during the day like fog and titles and fame.

We must hold onto that which gives our lives meaning and substanceand values are the only thing we have that gives lives meaning and substance, values like Justice and Love and honor.

If you want to find certainty in your life, you must reject the temporaryand translucent like fame and money and titles.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The Greeks felt that a human being could not reach one full identity without the polis, city. When the Greek person identified themselves,the used their name and their city, Socrates of Athens.The Greek person identity was tied up with the city of their birth.Which meant they thought that their personal growth was tied upin whatever city they were born in. It was not possible to become who youare without a polis and in their eyes, a Greek polis. The question of identity was tied into the possibilities that was the polis. A person could only find outtheir possibilities in the context of the polis and no where else. Is the questionof possibilities for us tied into the context of the city? No, today a person's identity is not tied up within the city/polis. How do we find our possibilities today? Today we use education instead of the polis and education is usually understood to be the university/collage settings of today. That is where our possibilities areunderstood to be found. Alternatives are offered up as places where our possibilities are found, one alternative offered up is the Army, Be all that you can be, is a slogan of the Army. But think about it..... that slogan is suggesting that you can become "all you can be" in an organization that in the bottom line is a place where you learn to kill someone ina wide variety of ways, on land, on sea and in the air. This returns us toan earlier idea that the U.S. is basically a martial, military based society. Not devoted to peace or searching for peace, but engaged in a martial state, a continuous state of war. And given the longest lasting war in American history has been the war in Iraq/Afghanistan warthat has been going on since 2003 and given the budget of the United States,is a military budget with the vast majority of resources going to the "defense" budget. As a moral document, the budget makes it clear that, we the people,believe in security instead of freedom and the minimal amount of resourceswe devote to the health, education and welfare of our citizens is a failure on our part. If we take our budget as an understanding of possibilities,then our possibilities are martial, warlike, become all you can be...…

But our possibilities are much greater then simply learning to kill other human beings.That is basic and simple, every animal alive must learn that trait... but we are human beings and we are possessed with far greater abilities then just beingable to kill our fellow human beings. Let us stop taking the easy road to discoveringwhat our possibilities are which according to the budget of the United States,is martial values, when we could really begin the process of becoming who we are,which is rising to our full possibilities, instead of our lowest value/instinct which is the simply killing of men. We must search for the positive instead of the negativewhich is the another way of saying, the positive is to build and the negative is to destroy..... simple as that. We want to be positive and build and that is thetrue way to find our possibilities...… to just ask man to kill is to deny that weeven have a positive value like the act of creation. To build, to create is positive and to kill, to destroy is the negative...……and until we as a country learn thedifference between the positive and the negative, we shall be forever lost and confused as to what are our possibilities.

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"